LINGUIST List 14.2088

Thu Aug 7 2003

Qs: Financial Ontologies; Japanese Acoustics

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I am wondering if anyone knows of recent work in the construction of a
domain-specific ontology for financial terms? If so, I would be most
appreciative of any reference or contact information.
Leslie Barrett

Dear linguists,
I am trying to model the perception of American English "r" and "l" by
native speakers of Japanese. The acoustics of the AE "r" and "l" and
their variants have been documented pretty thoroughly, but I have been
unable to find a reference on the acoustics of the Japanese sounds, in
particular the apico-alveolar tap (as in "kuro" and "rika"), the
apico-alveolar lateral (as in "hanre" and "kanro") and the unrounded
velar approximant. I have found one book, "Japanese Phonetics: Theory
and Practice" by Tsutomu Akamatsu, that gives a very good articulatory
description of these phones, but it does not list the acoustic
features. If you know of any relevant work, I would appreciate a
pointer.
thanks in advance,
Gautam Vallabha
Center for Neural Basis of Cognition
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA
Email: vallabhacnbc.cmu.edu